Summer                                                                                   Solstice Moon

In the decompression zone.  Visits from family, any family, are occasions for renewal of ties and creation of new memories.  Further sticky material for the mysterious field that defines often faraway people as belonging to each other.  Both Mark and the Denver Olsons were here this last week.  Now they’re both gone.

Introverts like Kate and I have a doubled experience each time.  That is, we greet visitors and embrace them, eager to hear the latest news and have some new experiences together; but, too, we find our quiet and our routine disrupted.  Even our physical space.  That creates a tension, overlaid by the unusual such as cooking for 8, getting a driver’s license test, building bonfires, navigating to new destinations.

That means leave taking has a doubled sense, too.  Sadness at good-bye, but also relief as the quiet returns and the day’s rhythms return to their norm.  Of course, feeling relief when loved ones go can generate guilt, but for introverts that guilt has to be parsed with the knife of one’s true nature.  Sadness is just that, sadness.  And relief, well, that just means we are who we are.

Summer                                                                            Solstice Moon

Little feet pounding up and down the hallway.  Non-residents in the steam bath.  A dining

table set for six.  Cartoons on the tv.  Visitors coming to visit the visitors.  A storm of energy.  Talk about extravagance.

Rigel, our most wolfhound-like dog, likes to go into the entry passage between the garage and the kitchen to lie down.  It’s her safe place when thunderstorms approach.  She was back there last night and Gabe, 5 years old, looked at her and said to me, “Your dog is lonely.”

Gabe is all frenetic energy.  Running, opening, closing, activating electronic devices of all kinds, carrying this from here to there.  Banging on the piano.  (right now in fact) Switching his interests like mercury contacting an electrical lead.  He has mosquito bites, all swollen a bit more than I would find normal, probably due to his hemophilia.  When he came, three sacks filled with factor came with him and went into the downstairs refrigerator.  The factor adds back the clotting factors he’s missing in his clotting cascade.

Ruth has her energetic side, too.  She’s 7 after all.  But she said to me, “I read all the time.” She also recognizes onomatopoeia, alliteration, negative numbers and has a shy eagerness about learning.  We also watched her bowl a 195 on the Wii, then proceed to win a tennis match.  Her small body flows with grace.  In addition, and perhaps most tellingly for her future, she designs.  Dresses.  Which grandma then makes.  Her flare for color and shape surprises me.

Her parents are friends of mine.  We talk, often like college students, late into the night.  Jon and I dissected the American political economy last night.  Jen and I discussed the strange relational behavior of her psychiatrist uncle.  They’re teachers, Jen elementary and Jon art for elementary kids.  This is serious work, formative for our future, and yet also frustrating with high stakes tests and the reality of working with Latino and African-American kids coming from poor homes.

Mark, too, is still here.  He passed his driver’s license test yesterday and now will sport a Minnesota driver’s license as he travels the world.  His money is here as well.  So, in some defining ways, Mark has become a Minnesotan though he describes himself a warm weather guy, having spent most of the last 20 + years in either Thailand or Saudi Arabia.

As often happens when family gathers, I find myself wishing we were closer together.  When I grew up, my whole extended family on my mother’s side lived within a radius of 40 miles.  This allowed constant interaction that kept family life rich, but, also mundane, ordinary.  Now, it happens in these episodic bursts, the Stock Show in Denver, the occasional visit here, other times in Denver.  Mark and Mary come from time to time.

These infrequent family visits, supplemented in a powerful way by Skype and Facetime, represent the new reality for many.  I don’t know whether it’s better or worse, but it is different from the way I grew up, though I suppose I should add that my Dad’s family was spread around: Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana and Georgia.

Beltane                                                                                   Solstice Moon

The grand kids have arrived.  With their parents in tow.  We have a playhouse for them that we put in the woods at the same time we put in the orchard.  Now, just outside the area of the playhouse, we have the new fire pit.

Tomorrow night we’re going to have an inaugural solstice bonfire.  We plan bonfires on the two solstices and on Beltane and Samhain.  I hope these can begin to be gathering moments for folks interested in celebrating these turning points of the Great Wheel.  Stay tuned for more about these events. We’re going to test the bonfire concept tomorrow night on the grand kids, after that, y’all come.

This family has been on the road since last Friday, driving from Denver to Chicago, then north across the Mackinac Bridge into the U.P., across the U.P. to the Brule for a night, then here this afternoon.  That’s a lot of time in the car for four people.  Exhausting might not even cover it.

Good to have them here, building memories.  We get out there quite a bit, but it’s nice to have them here, too.

Beltane                                                                           Solstice Moon

The two ex-pats nodded knowingly at each other as they discussed returning to the U.S. for visits from their home’s abroad.  Mark said, “Yes, I walk down the hall at the motel and people move aside.”  Mary said, “Yes, I now what you mean exactly.”  Mark continued, “It’s the nuances.  I understand the signs here.  I don’t have to communicate with sign language.”  Again Mary agreed, but added, “Still, when I come back, there are also things that are strange.”  She talked about a time when she needed to call me to tell she had gotten delayed, but could no longer find a pay phone.  But they both agreed, Mary from Singapore and Mark from his motel in Coon Rapids, that there was a feeling of comfort at being in the home culture.

Mary says the pollution in Singapore is bad enough to make breathing difficult.  Loggers in Indonesia burn the forests, then the smoke crosses the Straits to reach this fortunately air-conditioned nation.  When Singaporeans and Malaysians complain  to Indonesia, the Indonesians point that the companies which own the forests and do the clear cutting and burning are owned by Malaysians and Singaporeans.  Meanwhile, many people wear masks or stay inside.  With little wind during the hot summer months it’s unclear how long this pollution will be around.  It began last Friday.

(Singapore yesterday)

Mary also reports that dengue fever, also known as bone break fever, has infected 10,000 already this year as opposed to 5,000 last year.  This has lead officials to declare dengue hot spots, marked with red circles, in which there have been ten or more cases.  In those hot spots mosquito control will come into your home and check for mosquitoes.  We know about mosquitoes, but not dengue fever, though West Nile virus is here.

(sand storm, Riyadh)

In response to a question Mark said that sand storms create similar problems to the haze in Singapore, with respiratory illnesses increasing.

The ex-pat life.